


The Midnight Train

by katnissdoesnotfollowback (lost_on_cloud_9)



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark!Peeta, Depression, Dubious Consent, Emotional Abuse, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everlarkficexchange, Explicit Consent, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Incest, Infidelity, Suicidal Thoughts, all aboard!!!!, but only shades of him, domestic abuse, my brain wouldn't let go of this, panem freaking sucks people, so here we go, some of you will probably laugh at my idea of dark peeta, step-relation incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 22:27:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17232368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_on_cloud_9/pseuds/katnissdoesnotfollowback
Summary: Desperation breeds desperate acts. Katniss makes a deal to protect her sister from the reaping, with no idea of how far-reaching the consequences will be.Originally written for the @everlarkficexchange Spring 2018 Edition based on the prompt -- “I know what you want. You have money, but what I have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a dream come true for people like you.“ Sexually frustrated trophy wife Katniss commissions artist Peeta who immortalizes naked women after giving them the greatest O of their lives. -- I deviated a tiny bit from the prompt.PLEASE HEED THE WARNINGS





	The Midnight Train

**Author's Note:**

> While this may have taken a complete turn away from the original prompt, the basic elements are still there. That sentence made better sense in my head. Hopefully it will make sense to you too by the end of the story and you are able to enjoy anyways! If you read this on tumblr, I have done some editing and cleaning up. No major changes to the story itself, but I like this version a little better. 
> 
> A thousand thanks to stjohn27 and savvylark for pre-reading. To 567 for submitting the prompt to the exchange because despite its dark nature and deviations from the prompt, I really am proud of this piece. And of course, thank you to javistg for gifting this fandom with an amazing fic exchange each spring for several years running now.

Her father died when she was seventeen. Her mother followed ten months later, on Katniss’ eighteenth birthday. They would starve or worse if Katniss didn’t begin working immediately. A future awaited her in the mines, they insisted.

A future that had killed her father. Drove her mother into despair and their entire family to the brink of desperation. And Katniss couldn’t stand the thought of spending almost every day of her life trapped underground where her father had died.

There were options, of course. A visit to one of the more lonely Peacekeepers guaranteed a handful of extra coins that she could stretch for a month, if Leevy Thompson’s information was reliable. She could hunt and feed her family that way, but hunting full time would look too suspicious. Bring too much attention to the way she flagrantly ignored the laws of Panem.

Katniss was looking for something more stable. More permanent. Prim was only twelve. She had seven Reapings in her future. 

She knew that he wanted her. Knew it in the way his cold blue eyes followed her across the town square. Found her after every Reaping she survived. She knew it because he never looked away in shame when she caught him looking. Not even when she was thirteen and still figuring out how to deal with the breasts slowly emerging on her chest or the warm tingling sensation between her thighs late at night or when she’d catch a glimpse of the wrestling team at practice. She knew he wanted her because sometimes when he watched her, he licked his lips as if preparing to devour a feast. His fingers brushed absently over the front of his trousers.

It made her feel itchy and small the way he looked at her, because she knew she couldn’t ask him to stop. He was the mayor after all, and could have anything he wanted.

She could have married Gale instead. He was strong and a skilled hunter. A good partner she worked well with. But he wanted children one day and already had five other mouths to help feed. Their life together would have been a constant struggle.

So the day after she turned eighteen, Katniss put on her best blue dress, walked Prim to school, and instead of attending classes herself, she knocked on the imposing front door of the mayor’s mansion.

“I’d like to speak with Mayor Mellark.”

The maid who answered scoffed and made to close the door in her face.

“Who is it, Gaia?” His voice rang out clear and commanding as it did every Reaping Day when he delivered the speeches touting the Capitol. The same as it did before public punishments. Whippings and beatings and hangings, all of which he oversaw with a satisfied smile and ended with a clap of his hand on Head Peacekeeper Thread’s shoulder for a job well done.

She hated his voice. It made her shudder.

But today it gave her a slim chance at a future for Prim. The maid opened the door wider so the mayor could see her and she tried not to vomit in the perfectly pruned shrubs outside his mansion when he smiled at her.

“Come inside,” he offered the invitation with a wave of his hand.

Gale tried to persuade her not to do it. The second the announcement was made, half the Seam turned their backs on her. She had sold herself into the good graces of the one person they hated almost as much as they hated President Snow.

But it didn’t matter, she told herself. Prim would be safe. He promised her that Prim would never see the inside of an arena. He arranged for Prim to move in with the apothecary and his wife. The couple had no children and were more forgiving of their niece than they had been of their sister. They would train her as a healer and apothecary, and Prim would never have to stay in the mayor’s mansion. Katniss would not be allowed to visit her. It would be...beneath her when the mayor’s wife could afford to be seen by real doctors.

Prim would be safe. Katniss chanted it over and over inside her head as she signed the papers in the Justice Building. Again as the mayor draped a strand of pearls around her throat.

“A wedding gift,” he said.

Over and over as she danced with him in the square. As she posed with him and his three sons for wedding pictures. The oldest son sneered at her, a hatred unlike anything she'd seen before in his eyes.

“Levi. Go get a punch for your mother,” the mayor said after the pictures. “She’s looking flush.”

“She’s  _ not _ my mother,” Levi snarled but still went to fetch the punch. He was the same age as Katniss and the only one of the three boys old enough to remember their mother -- the baker’s second daughter. She had been friends with Katniss’ mother before Lily ran away from town to marry a coal miner named Everdeen.

Rye, the middle son, vanished as soon as he smelled freedom from the posing and smiling of the pictures.

Only the youngest lingered or seemed to offer any sort of kindness to her, his blue eyes curious and questioning, but not malicious. He never knew his birth mother at all. She had died bringing Peeta into the world.

Katniss watched as her husband — the thought made her tense up to keep from showing a physical reaction — ruffled the boy’s curls and spoke with important officials. Peeta stepped away from his father as soon as the touch ended. He moved closer to Katniss.

All for Prim, she told herself all evening long. Through cake and dances and well wishes that no one really meant.

At least Prim was safe, she told herself when the mayor led her into the most luxurious bedroom she’d ever seen and told her it was hers. All hers.

At least Prim was safe, Katniss told herself as the mayor then led her to the adjoining room and told her this one was his. Two bedrooms for two people, each room on its own larger than her family’s old house in the Seam. She fumed at the extravagance. But at least she wouldn’t have to actually spend the whole night, every night, with him.

Then he kissed her and bit her lip. Dragged off the brand new white wedding dress, ignoring the sounds of ripping silk as he discarded it and growled that he was going to tame her, make her his.

At least Prim was safe, she told herself as she stifled her cries of pain in the pillow while the mayor slammed into her. Once. Twice. Thrice.

“Fuck,” he said and pulled out. “Touch yourself.”

“What?” she asked, unable to keep from looking at him. His dick was hanging in a curve towards the floor and streaked with a pinkish fluid.

“You’re not wet. Touch yourself.”

She hesitated and he sighed. Disappeared into his private bathroom and she thought perhaps she was off the hook.

Then he returned with two bottles. Pills clanked in one and he tossed one of them back, still watching her as she lay there in shock. He slathered the contents of the second over his dick and started to talk. The things he said frightened her. The things he said he wanted to do to her.

He stroked himself hard and entered her again. A dozen thrusts and then he flipped her onto her stomach. She stared at the door and held onto the sheets as he pounded into her. 

_ Slap slap slap _

Each thrust punctuated with a grunt.

At least Prim was safe, she told herself as the bedroom door opened and a wide eyed boy wandered in. 

_ Slap slap slap _

The mayor didn’t notice his youngest son watching them, or at least he didn’t stop even if he did. Should she say something?

But then the mayor was shouting in release and the boy was gone.

“Clean yourself up and go to bed.” 

She did as ordered and stared out the window. She had known this was part of the deal. At least Prim was safe.

At midnight, she was still awake and heard the blare of a train horn as it left or entered the station. She couldn’t tell. She hadn't know they ran this late. The Seam too far from the station to hear the horns from there.

The day after she married the mayor, Katniss set about doing something. She needed to do something before she gave in to the urge to claw her own skin from her body. With just her allowance, she now had more money to spend in a month than she’d ever seen before. She took the assistant cook and one of the maids with her and they shopped in the stores in town, then in the Hob. Whispers followed her in her fancy shoes and pearl draped neck. They weren’t too proud to take her money, at least, even if they wouldn’t look her in the eye or they spat on the floor as she left.

She ignored their disdain and their dirty looks and left her companions with Sae for a bowl of stew and a crust of bread. The servants seemed intimidated but did as the mayor’s new wife asked. While they were occupied, she bought all kinds of things she didn’t know if she’d have a use for. 

And one that she knew she would. 

The liquid glittered in the vial as the grizzled Seam woman explained she’d need a syringe to inject it, but it would last for six months at least. It cost most of her allowance, but Katniss handed over the exorbitant sum without hesitating.

“I’ll be back for another in six months,” Katniss promised the woman who gave her a toothy smile.

When she returned to the mansion, she dealt with her purchases and then moved to head upstairs. The door to the office flew open and out raced Peeta, cheeks red and tear stained as he collided with her then recoiled.

“Don’t touch me!”

“That is no way to speak to your mother, young man. Apologize this instant,” the mayor commanded and Peeta’s jaw clenched.

He stared at the carpet as he muttered. “I’m sorry, Mother.”

“Good. Get upstairs. We’re done talking about this. And none of that drawing nonsense!”

It was only after dinner when her hip still smarted from injecting herself with a Capitol grade birth control that she heard the servants whispering and learned what had happened.

“Another fist fight. And the teacher caught him drawing in class instead of taking notes. Again. Mayor Mellark is sending him away to school.”

They clucked their tongues and shook their heads, bemoaning the poor sweet boy for being cursed with such a wretched father.

“Dad, I don’t want to go,” Peeta said just days later, sounding scared and plaintive at the train station.

“You’ll go and you’ll succeed. The Capitol has the best schools available. And hopefully, they'll teach you some discipline and respect. Make you into a real man. Don’t embarrass me.”

The boy’s lip quivered and he glanced over at Katniss. She should hate this boy for everything he stood for, but as tears welled up in his blue eyes, she succumbed and bent over in front of him to speak to him eye to eye.

“It won’t be that long. You’ll be home for the summer break,” she assured him, surprised when he threw his arms around her neck and squeezed the breath out of her.

Then he picked up his suitcase and went without another word.

Peeta was only gone a month before he came home. Quiet and studious. He spent most of his time in the garden, drawing. But not even the mayor’s sons were safe from the Reaping.

Katniss almost wished it was her, but it wasn’t. Nor was it Prim, and she breathed easy for the space of two minutes. It  _ was _ the mayor’s middle son that year. He died in the shadow of the Cornucopia, the last victim of the bloodbath at the start of the 77th Hunger Games. He was only fourteen years old.

The day after the Victor was crowned dawned hot and muggy. The Mayor spent all morning sequestered in his office. Right before the mid day meal, he summoned Katniss to him.

She bit back her tears as the room rang out with the slapping of skin and his guttural grunts. She could see the back of a blonde head through the ivory curtains covering the windows. The desk dug a furrow into the front of her hips as he swore and then slapped her ass raw. Her soft whimpers of pain got him hard enough to finish.

When she tried to move away from him, his fingers bit into her hips, holding them together.

“You’re gonna give me another son. I want a Victor. Strong. A survivor like you. Not a milk sap weakling like that pussy out there.” She tried again to get free and he wrapped a hand around her neck to hold her in place. “Don’t move. I want my cum in you as long as possible. Don’t move, baby.”

She tried not to shudder as he whispered about how good a mother she already was to his son. How he wished she had married him sooner. Then maybe she would have had a chance to turn his youngest son into a real man, but he feared it was already too late for Peeta. He pet her back and held her down for almost half an hour while the pill wore off. All while she could see that same son through the window, sitting in the gardens. Maybe she could have taught the middle son her illegal skills to help him survive the arena, the mayor growled. When he finally let her go, he told her to be ready to get fucked often.

Several weeks later, long after Peeta had gone back to the Capitol, the mayor stood mid chew from the dinner table and walked over to her. He grabbed her hand and placed it over his hardening dick.

“My cycle started this morning,” she told him. His face contorted in disgust but he dropped her hand and walked away, grabbing his plate and leaving her to eat in the dining room alone. 

When her period ended, he fucked her three times a day. He burned through half a dozen bottles of pills from the Capitol to do it.

“It’s only been a few months. Took my first wife close to a year to conceive each of our boys,” he said as sweat poured down his face and her fingernails dug into her own thighs to hold her legs open like he had ordered her to do. “Give. Me. A. Fucking. Victor.” He bit out the words as his thrusts stuttered and he came. 

A whole year of submitting to him.

She found solace in what she could now that she was the mayor’s wife and her woods were forbidden to her. Most people had looked the other way when she was just Katniss from the Seam, but she was pushing it now simply by frequenting the Hob. Katniss Mellark, Mayor Mellark’s wife had no place poaching in the Capitol’s woods. 

Katniss gave away money as best she could and people slowly stopped sneering at her. She renewed her contraband birth control shot six months after her wedding. Prim blossomed under the tutelage of the apothecary. The mayor’s oldest son moved to District Five to begin a career working for the government there.

Peeta called home once a month and reported to Katniss in a monotone voice that classes were going well and no, he hadn’t been in any fights. The reports that came home from the teachers described a model student. Bright, caring, hard working, quiet and well behaved, well liked by all his peers. The mayor grunted in satisfaction whenever he read the reports.

Katniss didn’t get pregnant. 

He could have anything he wanted, the mayor, but she refused to give him this. The mayor’s house grew more tense and quiet with each passing month. The servants gave her pitying looks every morning she gently lowered herself into her chair for breakfast. The cooks learned her favorite foods and made sure her plate was never without something she loved. She used her ample funds to make sure the servants and their families never wanted. But she was powerless to protect their children from the Reaping. She’d already sold everything she could offer to guarantee Prim’s safety. She had nothing left to bargain with.

Every night, she listened for the midnight train leaving District Twelve, longing to just climb aboard and vanish into the night. But then what would happen to Prim?

One day in early May, Katniss came home from afternoon shopping to the sounds of fucking in her husband’s office. A shrill pitched series of moans and loud thumping. The averted gazes of the staff. She watched curiously from the stairs, looking down towards the office door as the woman left, holding her Capitol styled shoes and dragging a feather boa behind her. Katniss supposed she should care that her husband was having an affair. But she supposed jealousy and anger and betrayal over something like that belonged to someone she loved. And she didn’t love the mayor.

“Pass the salt please,” she said at dinner that night.

The mayor smashed his fists on the table and shouted that she could damn well get it herself. He left the room and flipped over a serving tray on his way out.

Everyone ignored the sounds of him swearing and grunting from the conservatory later. Ignored the gardner as she slipped out after the sounds ceased, ducking her head and wiping her mouth as she ran from the house.

The gardner had three daughters all of Reaping age. All pretty blonde girls. Katniss couldn’t fault the gardner for seeking extra security for them.

The door between her room and the mayor’s was locked that night and remained locked.

“He’s infertile,” Helena, one of the maids, whispered as Katniss knelt next to the woman and helped her clean up the shattered crystal decanter one day, the most recent victim of his rage. “He found out right before your one year anniversary.”

“How?” Katniss asked and the maid pursed her lips to shake her head as one of the butlers passed by them, examining his cufflinks and not bothering to help.

“Doctor told him it’s because the pills he takes to, you know...help him,” Helena told her when the butler had gone.

Katniss could feel her cheeks turn pink as she scrubbed harder to get the bourbon out of the carpet. The pills to make him stay hard.

“Apparently it does damage if you take too many.” Helena squeezed Katniss’ shoulder as she stood when they were done. The touch felt like understanding.

She’d never felt freer than she did in the next two weeks.

The mayor refused to touch her beyond superficial or ceremonial events. In public they smiled, the picture of a thriving Panem family. At home, she listened to the walls echo with the sounds of her husband fucking everyone but her. Desperate to prove he could get  _ someone _ pregnant. She didn’t want to fuck him. But she didn’t want anyone else punished either.

Year after year dragged on. Children died to the Games, twenty-three at a time. The name Primrose Everdeen never called at a Reaping. Never attached to tesserae.

“There’s a summer program for those interested in politics,” Peeta announced on the phone, around the time he turned fourteen, sounding serious but his voice cracking on a few words. He cleared his throat and asked her to tell his father. “I’ll be home for the Reaping, but then I’ll return here.”

There was always a summer program in the Capitol. But he always came home for the Reaping and stayed until the end of the Games.

Katniss spent hours socializing with high placed District and Capitol officials. She played hostess to them all. The mayor fucked her once every blue moon, just to remind her that she belonged to him. He never stayed hard for long and told her it was because she was no longer tight. 

“Your cunt is used the fuck up. Who you fucking on the sly? Huh? Who you fucking on the sly, bitch?”

“The baker,” she said because she knew he wouldn’t believe her if she told the mayor the truth. Told him that he was the only one who had used it. She didn’t want to fuck anyone.

“I’ll have him killed in the middle of the fucking square. What do you want for him? Hanging or firing squad?” He grew harder inside her as he said it and her stomach roiled at the evidence of violence working to arouse him.

“Go ahead. Take your pick,” she said as the mayor finally came.

“You think I won’t? You’re not fucking the baker. You’d be stupid if you were,” he panted over her neck and played with her hair. She shuddered in revulsion and he took it for desire. He stayed on top of her and swallowed one of his pills and when he was hard again, he stood up and shoved her to her knees. “Suck until I tell you to stop.”

The year Peeta and Primrose both turned sixteen, Katniss somehow wound up meeting him at the train station, stunned at how much he had changed in the past year. The boy with the quivering lip was long gone, replaced by a boy — almost a man — who waved at her and smiled warmly in greeting, whose gait was now a confident swagger. He already towered over her and dwarfed her in breadth. 

Peeta didn’t really look anything like his father beyond the blonde hair and blue eyes. The shades weren’t even the same. She wondered if his features took after his mother. She hoped they did, but her mental picture of the mayor’s first wife had already hazed over with time.

Peeta’s deepened voice, almost like velvet -- so much softer than his father’s -- sent strange currents through her as he sat across the table from Katniss, calmly eating dinner and explaining new models of government being debated in the dorm halls at his school.

“That will never work,” the mayor insisted.

“But—“ 

“No foolish talk at dinner!” the mayor said and Peeta jumped when his father’s fist hit the table. 

Katniss kept her eyes on her plate. After dinner, she went for a walk in the garden so she could ignore the screams coming from her husband’s bedroom.

“My father’s an idiot.” Peeta’s voice startled her and she jumped this time, heart fluttering as he stepped from the shadows.

“What would you know?” Katniss asked harshly. “You’re still just a child.”

“I won’t be for much longer. And when I’m not, if I’m lucky enough to have a wife like you, I wouldn’t be making love with anyone but her. I’d want her screaming not to please me, but because I’m the only one who can please her.”

She stared at his mouth, the lush lines of his lips as he smiled. 

“I’d find every way to make you come and then discover twenty more just because I’d want you completely satisfied.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that. I’m -- I’m your --”

“You’re  _ not _ my mother,” he said, but it wasn’t cruel like the way his oldest brother said it. It left her panties wet. “Good night, Katniss.”

The day of the Reaping, Peeta stood in the square with every other child at risk. She found herself wishing safety for him as well this year.

His name wasn’t called. Neither was Prim’s.

As the Tributes made their way towards the Capitol, Peeta swam in the pool behind the Mayor’s house. His legs and arms powerful as he cut through the water.

Katniss watched him from an upstairs window. Unable to get his words about her out of her head. It wasn’t right. He was too young. He didn’t know what he was talking about, she was sure. Bold words he surely uttered to make himself sound older than he really was rang in her head. Her breasts grew heavy and her thighs slick with arousal with each successive lap he swam. She pressed her palm against the wall and her breath fogged up the window. No one had ever satisfied her the way he claimed to want to. She couldn’t give in to the illicit promise in his words.

He was still a child. And she was married to his father.

She turned away from the window and avoided him the rest of the time he was home. The morning he left, she faked a headache so the mayor couldn’t expect her to see Peeta off at the train station.

Two more years rolled by and Katniss listened to the whispers of the district. Traded at the back door of the mansion with anyone who brought wares she could concoct an excuse for needing. Gale was one of her best suppliers. The mayor of Twelve served wild grown berries and fresh game, wild turkey and squash grown in secret just beyond the fence. Fish from streams in the woods, apples from the trees behind the town square. Guests from the Capitol and other districts marveled at the wild bounty of such a poor district.

Katniss owned shoes for every occasion and dresses to match. She filled the mayor’s closet with clothes made by merchants, the fibers plucked in secret from the woods around Twelve by Seam hands. Homemade remedies for sickness, old glass containers painted and dusted with shimmering powders, and rough hewn sculptures she claimed were art filled their shelves. In a way they were art, a story of desperation and starvation carved into loose bits of scrap wood.

She bought secrets with each purchase. Whispers of discontent. She followed dinner conversation assiduously, seeking the clues of arms and Peacekeeper movements. Signs of unrest in other districts. She felt she might burst with the information, not knowing where to turn with it or what to do as it built up inside her. She read the mayor’s Capitol papers and watched the news feeds, dutifully giving him highlights and reserving her analysis for herself.

The summer after he turned eighteen, Peeta came home for his final Reaping. Dinners were stiff and formal, the mayor holding tight to his anger at his son as Peeta talked about the theaters, the arts and the museums of the Capitol and how bringing some of that culture to Twelve could help the people.

“They do not need art. Art is a distraction from labor.”

“Or art could be a form of joy that gives the laborer hope.”

The mayor stood abruptly at this. “Watch your tongue, boy.”

Peeta’s eyes flicked over to Katniss and dropped to the table as a smile played around his handsome lips.

“My apologies,  _ father _ . I only meant that such hope would give them a reason to work harder.”

She managed to avoid Peeta for two days until one night she found herself hungry and walked the dark hall towards the kitchens. She ran into him there and he offered to cook for her while she sat and they talked. The kitchens suited him. Here he was open and friendly and seemed content, relaxed, hidden away from the dictates of his father and Katniss wondered if he spent secret hours here as a child. Before the mayor sent him away to the Capitol. Words flew between them as fast as his hands worked and she soon found herself laughing, enjoying this easy version of him. 

He told her about school and his classmates. The districts he’d been to on holidays with their families or on school outings. The beauty to be found in their world, hidden beneath the ugliness. The potential for the world to be beautiful again. He didn’t say that exactly, but it’s the foolish hope she heard in her head as he talked. Maybe their world could be good again, but so much would have to change first.

She watched his clever fingers as he worked and ignored the tightening in her belly when he licked them clean with a sensual smack. He caught her looking and smiled. The midnight train horn echoed through the night.

“When he told me to watch my tongue, do you know what I was thinking?”

“Peeta,” she tried to warn but he persisted.

“I was thinking that I’d like to watch my tongue working in and out of your wet pussy.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whispered.

“Then teach me,” he whispered back. Heat curled in her belly and her body craved.

She left without eating and lay in bed, tossing restlessly until morning.

The next day, she saw him in the garden, sketching again. He really was quite talented. The mayor grumbled at him over dinner for wasting time on useless frivolities when he could be courting a wife of high position in the Capitol, engaging in politics, working to improve Panem, or a hundred other more important things.

That night, Katniss tossed in bed, once more unable to sleep. She could finally stand it no more. She ambled down the hallway, thinking she’d take a bath to relax herself, but was too absorbed in her thoughts to notice the shaft of light under the door. She walked in without knocking and came to a halt, gasping at the sight that greeted her.

Alerted by the sound, Peeta turned in the glass walled shower to face her and a smile slowly curled his lips up. She swallowed and her hand flew to her neck as she watched him. She couldn’t look away. Couldn’t tear her eyes away from his body. Toned and muscular with water running over him. His hair hanging over his ears and eyes, straightened and lengthened with the weight of the water saturating the normally curly locks. Blonde curls scattered over his chest, a dark trail of them leading her gaze down. Down to where his hand worked his stiff shaft in a gentle, steady rhythm. His teeth parted on a heavy breath and his lashes fluttered and still she could not move or look away.

“Shut the door, Katniss,” he said, barely audible over the sound of the water. She did as he said and leaned back on it as their eyes met. His hand pumped faster and his unoccupied palm flattened on the glass separating them. Steam curled through the air and he moaned softly right before his cum splattered across the shower door. Thick, milky white streams of it.

They stood there as he continued to pump himself. Until the last spurt coated glass and his shoulders heaved. Then he smiled and, still holding his cock with one hand, trailed two fingers of the other through his own semen, gathering it on the pads and offering it up to her.

“Want a taste?”

Her hand grasped wildly for the door knob and she fled. Fled to her room where she paced and tried to quench the fire burning in her belly. But it was no use.

Katniss laid down on her window seat, dropped her hand to her navel and caressed, thinking of his fingers and lips and his intense blue gaze. His fit body and his charm and what it might feel like to have his face and his tongue between her legs. Her fingers in his hair. Slowly, her fingers traveled down her body, down to tug up the hem of her nightdress, over quivering skin as her thighs dropped open and her breathing grew ragged.

She ached for him to touch her as she’d never ached before. It made no sense. He was a spoiled, entitled Capitol brat. She should hate him with every cell in her body. But she came with a few frantic swipes of her fingers and the idea of Peeta’s tongue between her folds. She came hard and curled into a ball as the spasms wracked her body.

It was only as she lay there in the afterglow of release that it occurred to her. All he said was to shut the door. She could have left and then closed it. But she had stayed.

She had stayed because she had wanted to witness his pleasure. She wanted to take pleasure in watching him.

The shame of what she had done kept her in her room for five days until she had to leave it for the Reaping.

Prim was safe. Safe for real at last. 

When Peeta left for a fancier school in the Capitol, one of higher education, Katniss braved taking him to the train station. He smiled at her and hugged her close, whispering that she’d be in his thoughts while he was gone.

In the autumn, Prim married the shoemaker’s youngest son. He moved into the apothecary and began training with her to take over the business eventually. Katniss was not invited to the toasting. But at least Prim was safe. By spring, Prim was pregnant and Katniss knew she would stay with the mayor, if only to keep that child safe too.

The next time Peeta came home, he was twenty and sporting a line of stubble on his jaw, his normally impeccable suit recklessly disheveled. Top buttons undone, tie loosened and swinging free, sleeves pushed up and his shoes scuffed. A hard edge in his blue eyes.

She followed him when he snuck out at night, telling herself it was because she didn’t want him to get in trouble with his father. Even the mayor’s son was subject to curfew.

She expected a trip to the slag heap or a shack in the Seam, a clandestine tryst with a woman.

Instead she watched him lean against a pole of the fence surrounding the district and light a cigarette. Trees grew close to this section of fence and cast shadows obscuring her view. She almost missed the papers passed through the dead wires into a gloved hand.

She left after that as Peeta stayed to finish his cigarette. He came home smelling of cheap perfume and smoke, with his clothes even more disheveled, a shirt tail hanging out and a smear of makeup on the collar, his hair messed up.

She stood there as his father lectured him about propriety and breaking curfew, about setting the example for the district as the mayor’s son, but while the words seemed harsh, the tone was proud. And once again, Katniss didn’t miss the handoff. This time it was a box of prophylactics. Capitol grade protection given to the mayor's youngest son with a cheeky smile and a dirty wink. A pride and relief that “maybe he is just like his old man.”

Peeta entertained at dinners, making all the overprimped visitors laugh loudly and talk longer. Katniss held back a scowl at how easily he got them to open up, how deftly he flirted with both men and women alike. How easily he slid away with them to “show them the gardens.” But she guessed it was because Peeta was just like them.

Only he wasn’t. 

Peeta treated everyone with kindness and respect. Dignity. From the diamond laced ladies of the Capitol to the lowest coal miner begging in the streets of District Twelve.

He snuck out at all hours and returned acting drunk or recently fucked, his footsteps loud and disruptive in the late night, but each time she followed him, all he did was walk along the District perimeter and smoke or disappear into The Hob well after the black market had closed down. Sometimes he wandered to the train station at night. She hid in the shadows and watched him laughing and conversing with the train workers, leaning against the back car and casually smoking a cigarette. Other nights, he played cards with Thread and some of the other Peacekeepers. She couldn’t stomach the sight of them laughing and talking boisterously.

And she couldn’t catch him with any women, try as she might. Or men. Not so much as one desperate Seam girl sucking his dick for a meal. There were the Capitol visitors who returned from the gardens flushed and bright eyed, but Katniss could never quite catch him in the act there either.

Katniss needed to know what Peeta was doing. It was consuming her.

She watched as he left with his father one day, carrying baggage and headed to the train station. The mayor had business in the Capitol and asked his son to see him off. He’d be gone for two weeks, and Peeta for at least an hour, giving Katniss plenty of time.

“I’ll take care of that, Meredith. I’ve got some energy I need to burn,” she told the maid and took the cleaning supplies from her hands. She ignored the profuse thanks as the woman hobbled away, her pregnant belly hindering her movements.

With a deep breath, Katniss entered Peeta’s room and set aside the cleaning supplies to quickly search his drawers. She grasped behind the furniture or up inside the drawers. Between the mattresses, she found half a dozen sketch books filled to the brim. Images of people from all walks of life, from the Districts, the Capitol, and everywhere in between. There were even some of her and the skill with which he captured every face took her breath away. Stunning landscapes and blindingly accurate portrayals of birds, animals, and plants. His father mocked him for his art, but Katniss wondered if he would if he knew how talented his son was. 

In the bedside stand, she found nothing suspicious except an opened and half empty box of condoms. She dropped the box, scattering the foil wrapped packages as her gut squeezed in pain. Falling to her knees, Katniss gathered the items.

Her eyes flicked up as she worked and she froze. Slid a hand beneath the bed and discovered a slit cut into the bottom. Reaching her hand inside, her fingers lit on an envelope. Her heart hammered in anticipation as she slid it loose. Leaving the condoms scattered on the floor, she stood and opened the envelope. Palms sweating as her eyes scanned the contents and her brain tried to deny what they meant.

“What are you doing searching my room?” His whispered words made her jump and spin. His fingers closed around her wrist and she stared up at him, struggling to gain her freedom. Peeta’s grip on her tightened, became almost painful. He smiled at her and her pulse fluttered, her skin vibrating beneath his hold.

“Let me go.”

“I can’t,” he said and the wavering note of desperation in his voice called to her.

Katniss did the only thing she could think of in the moment. She rose on her toes and pressed her mouth to his. His lips went pliant in seconds. Her fingers wove through his curly hair to grab hold of something steady as her entire world disintegrated.

Peeta was a rebel. A spy. A traitor.

As the pieces clicked into place, she fell back on his bed, dropping the damning evidence and taking him down with her as he moaned around her tongue and discovered her mouth with his. Her greedy hands searched under his clothes for skin. And her nails scraped over it when she found it.

“Do I have to fuck you into silence?” he whispered into her neck.

“Peeta, we can’t,” she whined, and yet her hands still grasped at the fastenings of his trousers.

“I locked the door. He’ll never know.”

They shed their clothes down to their underwear then he knelt on the floor and tugged her ankles until she was splayed before him, legs dangling over the edge of his bed.

“Fuck I can’t wait to taste you, Katniss. I’ll bet you’re delicious. Forbidden fruit always is.” She grabbed hold of his duvet and stared up at the carved and gilded ceiling, her breath raspy as his touch grazed her over her panties. “Soak these panties for me. Soak them with your need. Look at me while I touch you.”

Katniss lifted her head and their eyes locked together as his fingers stroked and pressed and his lips whispered kisses and words of longing and need to her thighs. She moaned and he shushed her. There were still servants in the house, after all.

When her panties were good and soaked, he slid them from her body and she tore off her bra, fondling her own breasts for him and pinching her nipples as heat settled firmly between her thighs.

“You are magnificent. You should be worshiped by someone who can appreciate how incredible you are,” he murmured and shoved her panties in his bedside drawer then shucked his own underwear. Katniss bit her lip to keep from groaning at his cock. Straight and thick, impossibly hard and embraced with coarse golden curls.

She wanted his cock but instead she got his mouth. He knelt again and inhaled deeply the fragrance of her arousal before latching his lips to hers, his blue eyes focused on hers, daring her to deny that she wanted this. That she needed him. She squirmed at first, a stranger to the sensations of a mouth there, but his wriggling tongue and insistent fingers soon had her writhing desperately against him. Then coming and pinching back a scream of relief.

“I’m gonna make you come like this again, Katniss,” he promised and draped her limp legs over his shoulders. “I’m gonna make you come like this until dinner.”

Peeta refused to relent. Refused to let her go. Making her come with his tongue pressed to her clit, inside her lips, then again on her clit with his finger slicked in lube and teasing her ass.

He did things to her she’d never dreamt possible and made her both curse and praise his Capitol education. As the sun sank lower, he finally stood and smiled down at her.

“Stay there. Please,” he said and with two dozen harsh strokes of his cock, he came all over her belly. When he was done, he gazed at her in wonder and gasped out two words. “A masterpiece.”

She lay there, soaked in sweat and his seed, her breathing harsh and her body exhausted yet still needy for more. She bit back disappointment as he put his shorts on and offered her bra to her.

Instead of taking it, she swirled her fingers through his cum and sucked it down her throat. His jaw dropped and she shrugged. “I wanted a taste.”

“Fuck,” he whispered and she stood, taking his undershirt from his hands and using it to clean herself. Then she dressed and slid out the door to go take a shower, hoping he couldn’t see the way her legs wobbled with weakness.

They didn’t speak during dinner. Not a word. But when he snuck out to the train station that night, she followed him. She watched him lean against the caboose and smoke a cigarette as he talked to the crews. When he finished that one, he lit his second and asked the crew about a new sign. They all looked in the direction he pointed, but Katniss watched him. Saw him affix something beneath the rear platform of the train car.

He waved good night shortly after and crushed his cigarette out as he left the train station. She cornered him and pushed him into the shadows.

“You’re a rebel spy,” she whispered and he grinned then turned on her so that his body shielded her from view, trapped her against the wall. Trapped her right where she wanted to be.

“And you’ve seen too much. How can I persuade you to keep this pretty mouth quiet?” He trailed his thumb over her bottom lip as he spoke.

“Kiss me,” she said and met him as his mouth descended towards hers. Their teeth clashed and pain radiated through her skull at the contact, but she refused to stop. 

She wanted him. She wanted him for herself and since she’d turned eighteen and married the mayor, she had nothing she could call her own.

She wanted Peeta to be hers.

Her hands pushed at his jacket. He pulled her legs up and around his waist, pressed himself into her groin so she could feel his erection on her clit. He rocked his hips and swallowed her moans as they kissed. Then his lips trailed forbidden fire down her throat.

“Fuck me, Peeta. Fuck me hard and deep. Oh fuck I need you to fuck me right here,” she whispered as his hand ran up her leg, up beneath her dress to the apex of her thighs. She twisted and thrust herself towards his fingers, desperate to have his touch on her aching nub.

“You want me to use my fingers or my cock?”

“Oh! Both,” she gasped and clung to him as his fingers entered her. One finger and then a second as she whined and bit into his shoulder.

“Fuck yourself on my fingers,” he urged and she rocked her hips, caught his thumb on her clit and cried out. He kissed her to silence her and then the train engine fired up, the loud noise covering the sounds she made as she came. And then their relieved moans as he entered her.

The second she felt his coarse hair on her lips, she moved. Rolling and rocking and unwilling to give an inch as he drove into her and she sang quiet praises at how well he filled her. How incredibly good he felt inside her. How much he pleased her. He fucked her as the train warmed up. As the wheels squealed when it began to move. Her body arched and bounced and then sprang loose. She clung to his shoulders as her release rocked through her and coaxed his out of him too.

“Fuck, Katniss. I can’t stop wanting you,” he moaned in the dark. Right before the midnight train blared it’s horn.

They had two weeks. Two weeks of fucking in the closets, behind the Hob, in the middle of the night when the rest of the household was fast asleep. Katniss even risked taking Peeta into the woods so she could fuck him by the shores of the lake where she often fished as a girl. But it wasn’t all fucking.

She told him everything. About watching Prim grow from a distance and not being able to be a part of that. She told him about missing her sister and the longing she felt for her woods every day that she breathed. How much she missed her father. The desire she kept in her heart to watch their world burn so she could finally be free. 

She told him everything. All the pent up knowledge of years of hunting with her father, how to survive in the woods. She spilled out years worth of gossip. Who was loyal to the Capitol and who was lukewarm, and those who were too eagerly loyal to  _ not  _ be hiding something.

They entertained together in his father’s absence and people remarked what a fine young man and model son Peeta turned out to be, a line Katniss taunted him with when she was grinding her pussy on his face later that night. He responded by throwing her off of him and then pounding her to a mind numbing orgasm with his cock buried inside her lips and his hand over her mouth to stop her ecstatic squeals from getting too loud.

“I’m a terrible son,” Peeta whispered in her ear, his breath hot and his voice soft as she came.

He spoke about his brother who died in the games and the blows his father would strike his sons to discipline them, always on the back where no one could see beneath the fine clothes. He told her about the many faces he wore. The masks used to extract information and secrets. The mayor’s playboy wastrel youngest son with a talent for art and politics but no real ambition. Skilled at seduction and kissing secrets out of bored Capitol socialite wives. Women who needed a good fuck and an incredible orgasm and couldn’t find it in their marriage bed. Women who posed for him so he could draw them, after he’d made them come.

“As a souvenir for them to remember me by,” he explained with disgust in his voice. Then he told her it all started with his classmates’ mothers. Women who opened their arms and their homes to him, cooed over how he must miss his own home and family and how he was always welcome in theirs, but it came with a price. They wanted his body and his youth, his smiles and his sexual vigor. He told her how those mother’s claimed to be helping him, educating him, making him feel desired. All their excuses to hide the truth — that they were the ones needing to feel desired. Eventually he learned the cues to ease them into seducing him, trusting him with their closest held secrets. A careful game where he was the real manipulator.

“Seduce me. Show me your best moves,” Katniss teased and he chuckled.

“Thought I already did.”

But he kissed her and reached for the pearl necklace she’d discarded on the bedside table when she’d shed her clothes. Peeta told her to get on her knees and she did so, eager to suck his cock, something she’d discovered she could take great pleasure in as long as it was Peeta’s dick in her mouth. Instead, he knelt behind her and threaded the pearl strand between her thighs. He slid the pearls over her panties, back and forth, the ridges created by the string of orbs catching on her clit. He did that and whispered to her about her spirit and her strength and how she inspired him. He whispered that she was his everything. 

He teased her to the brink with the pearls and his words until she was so wet her panties stuck between her folds and her nails bit crescents into his thighs as she held him in place behind her.

“Now fuck me. Take me how you want me,” he told her and held the pearls in place as she lowered herself onto his cock so they rubbed over her clit and slid between her folds as she rode him and came with stifled moans, making the pearls slick with their sex. After, they lay in his bed as late into the night as they dared, holding one another and listening to the midnight train leaving the district.

The mayor returned. Katniss rebuffed all of Peeta’s veiled advances and innuendos, constrained by the presence of his father. Peeta grew sullen. Her heart ached. Burst with pain, deprived of his touch. She wore the pearls every day and fingered them to seek strength.

The masks suffocated and chafed, but they continued the ruse. Peeta snuck out at night to send messages and information off to contacts in other Districts. They played their parts, entertaining their guests and gleaning every whisper of rumor and every drop of truth they possibly could.

The entire happy family took a holiday tour of the Arenas and Katniss tried not to show her disgust. Peeta managed to make the act more convincing than she did, although there were nights when she found him on the back platform of the train as they sped through the night, smoking and claiming the ash caused his reddened eyes, not his grief for his brother. Katniss longed to hold him and knew she could not.

Then on to the Capitol where she saw in blinding oversaturated hues just how deep the Game went. She saw it in a mirrored window as Peeta whispered into another woman’s ear, his words making the woman blush and giggle and tug on the lapels of his jacket to bring him closer, to capture him. Then they disappeared for hours. 

Bile rose in her throat when he joined her for breakfast the next morning.

“You were out late last night,” she sneered and the mayor laughed, commented on his son’s prowess with the ladies and Katniss’ overprotective motherly instincts. Peeta smirked at his father and slathered butter over his biscuit. But there was a brief look of pain in his eyes meant only for Katniss.

On the train back to District Twelve, she felt the walls closing in on her. Near midnight, she capitulated sleep and, checking the corridors, made her way to Peeta’s compartment, locking the door behind her. She slid a hand over his mouth to keep him from making a sound and woke him with a whisper. His body jolted and a knife glittered in the moonlight. He stopped himself right as the blade reached her throat. It nicked the pearls still draped around her neck and never reached her skin.

He dropped the blade and she dropped her hand. 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

They whispered the words to each other on repeat as their bodies rocked with the motion of the train and the clanging bells as they raced through an unknown district covered the sounds they made as they both succumbed to euphoria.

“I fucking hate this,” she whispered as she lay on top of him, spent but unwilling to leave just yet and knowing that she must.

“Only a little longer and then we’ll be free.”

She slipped away in the early morning and cried into her pillow until she needed to rise and dress.

“It’s disgusting. What do they hope to gain?” the mayor said to his son as they shared a drink and watched the news reports from the Capitol. Rebels had taken control of Districts Eleven, Four, Eight, and Seven. Additional Peacekeepers were on their way to all other Districts. All officials were on alert to capture spies. Katniss watched from the doorway as Peeta brushed off his father’s concerns, placated him with assurances that the might of the Capitol would overcome. This was only a minor setback.

Fire danced on the screen, mesmerizing her. Hypnotizing and beautiful. This was how the world looked when it was burning.

The pair was so engrossed with their conversation, they didn’t notice Katniss in the doorway behind them. Or the change to a report on wanted spies and traitors. A technology genius and former Victor from District Three who had vanished. A pair of stylists from the Capitol and the famed film director, Cressida. 

They were still absorbed as the screen switched to a grainy, shadowy picture of a man in a train station, identified only as The JabberJay, a suspected spy and rebel conspirator from the Capitol, real identity unknown. A breathtaking sum offered for any information that would lead to the man’s capture. 

She held her breath until the picture changed. Her knees quaked in relief that the mayor hadn’t even noticed his son’s back pictured on the television.

“You need to be more careful,” she urged at the back door as Peeta slipped out into the night.

“I’ll be fine,” he said with a smile and kissed her cheek. “I’ll be back before midnight.”

She couldn’t sleep. She paced and then wandered to the kitchen for a glass of milk. It tasted sour on her tongue as she waited. She sat by the window in her room and let her head rest on the glass as the midnight train blared it’s horn and still no sign of Peeta. 

Katniss contemplated her options. She had no idea where to start looking for him. She’d put herself at risk if she just wandered the district aimlessly. And if she found him, she could put him in even more danger than he already was. It was better to wait and trust that he could take care of himself. He’d been a spy for years and knew what he was doing.

She woke stiff and unrested, and she stumbled from the window seat, downstairs to a household in uproar. The mayor shouting instructions to have the District turned upside down. 

His youngest son had disappeared.

That night, the mayor told Katniss to dress in her pearls and pretend nothing had happened.

“You tell everyone that Peeta went back to school early,” he growled and she nodded as she sat at her vanity to apply her makeup. She understood the game. She nearly gagged when he clamped a hand around her throat to force her to look at him in the mirror. “My son is  _ not  _ a traitor...understood?”

She swallowed beneath his grip, her skin pushing into his and her windpipe constricted under the hold. “ _ Our _ son is not a traitor,” she croaked.

“Good girl,” the mayor said and released his hold.

For weeks, she played the game. She knew the rules now since Peeta had told her everything he did. She walked late into the night delivering the packets Peeta used to. At first, she had no way of knowing if they fell into the right hands. But she smiled at dinners and fabricated stories about Peeta’s education in the Capitol, oozing charm and loving happiness for her husband.

She paid visits to Thread and the Peacekeepers under the guise of concern for her missing stepson and the future of Panem, but really to gain their trust through gifts of food and drink in a well crafted helpless rich wife act. There was no word or sign of Peeta but her visits were never fruitless.

At night, she listened for the sounds of the midnight train and held onto her memories, once more wishing she could just climb aboard one and vanish into the night.

But she had a new purpose now.

Months passed and she grew angry in secret. He left her here. If they’d caught him, they would have paraded him in front of a crowd and executed him publicly, gruesomely. Made an example of him. Which meant he’d left her. Peeta left her here to suffer and probably to die. At least, she would die on the inside without him. 

Winter arrived and she contemplated ways to end her life. She had no one left. Peeta had lied to her and then left her. Used her. She was certain of it. He had seduced her and used her for the information she could provide. Worst of all, she had fallen willingly into his arms, had believed it was all real. Just like one of his Capitol lovers.

Winter turned to spring.

They lost District Six and then Ten to the rebels. Nine and Five were tenuous at best. Thirteen came out of the shadows and Katniss wondered if theirs were the hands reaching through the fences to grasp hold of the information she and Peeta had possessed.

One by one, the districts fell to the rebels. Two and One seemed secure and Twelve languished, ignored, unimportant now that winter had passed and coal was not needed as much for heating or lighting the districts.

Or maybe Peeta had been killed in quiet. Maybe Snow couldn’t risk such a high profile, publicly known traitor. The son of Twelve’s mayor, a favorite of Snow’s, a man who could have had everything and anything he wanted. Who else might begin to question the Capitol if _ he _ had betrayed them?

She had kept her shot to prevent pregnancy current for eight years, but in that moment of weakness, for the first time ever, she briefly wished it would have failed her. Just once. Then she’d at least have a piece of Peeta to love. The moment passed and she remembered that she couldn’t bear to bring a child into this life. Not even Peeta’s. 

Katniss sank into her bath water and cried with her face hidden beneath the scented bubbles. It would be better if he were already dead. So she told herself that he was gone forever. At least he was free that way.

The longer Peeta stayed missing, and the worse things became for Twelve, the easier it became to convince herself. The mayor was angry enough in public for both of them. Punishments increased as the mayor desperately tried to hold onto Snow’s favor, and Katniss took more risks with what she revealed to the rebels.

She shook her head and agreed with the mayor’s disgust at the reports of assassinations, sabotage, derailed trains carrying Peacekeepers or supplies, many of which Katniss knew were at least partially her fault.

Her fault.

The words made her smile in secret. At night when she touched herself and bit back cries of Peeta’s name. He had left her, either by design or by death, but she still wanted him. She could understand him now. Even though he was gone.

Reports of new spies appeared on the news feed. They called her The Mockingjay and wherever her information aided the rebels, they painted the bird they named her for in red. As the months dragged on, the Capitol bled fear, the stench of it replacing all their honeyed perfumes. They whispered her name -- The Mockingjay -- over dinners, clutching their jewels and bemoaning what would be lost next.

Feeling the noose tightening, the mayor begged his friends in the Capitol to shelter him, just until this little rebellion was quelled. But fear is a powerful weapon, as is rumor. And everyone knew that Twelve's mayor was close to being replaced. No one had space for him and his wife.

The year Peeta would have turned twenty-one, there would be no Reaping. Too many districts were held in the rebels clutches for the Capitol to manage it but the dates were marked on the calendar, written in generations of blood and death and traditions that turned Katniss’ stomach. The night before the Reaping was scheduled to occur, the mayor’s wife paid a visit to the main power substation and left two baskets of treats with the Peacekeepers guarding it. The baskets contained four bottles of cold beer laced with sleep syrup. Enough to knock them out for an hour. On her way out, she dropped an apple packed with explosives and a timing device. Dropped it at just the right spot to roll where she needed it to go.

Gale had helped her build it, his eyes dark and suspicious when she’d asked for it. She couldn’t tell him what it was for. She couldn’t put her old friend at risk if it failed.

She had sent word to the rebels weeks ago. Telling them in code what their window would be. Now it was up to them to take advantage.

When she was done, she went home to soak in her tub. Afterwards, she put on her pearls and satin robe over her nightdress. She braided her hair and waited.

District Twelve burned that night. Rebels swarmed over the deactivated fences and gunned down Peacekeepers in the streets. Screams rent the night.

The mayor barricaded himself in his mansion with his wife, holding several of the maids hostage at gunpoint. It wasn’t enough. Rebels and Seam and Merchant alike overpowered him and forced him to his knees on the front steps. They dragged Katniss out the door behind him, kicking and screaming. Fighting for her life. Putting on a good show because in reality, she welcomed death by now.

As someone held a gun to her bent head, she reached up and twisted the pearls around her fingers so the last thing that went through her brain before the bullet would be thoughts of Peeta.

“Stop!” Katniss risked looking up at the rebel in all black as he approached the steps, a familiar swagger to his gait. Her pulse stopped in disbelief. “Not her.”

“She’s the mayor’s wife.”

“No. She’s The Mockingjay.”

Katniss heard the mayor yelling obscenities at both of them as Peeta stepped into the light and smiled at her. She didn’t see the mayor struggling against his captors as he tried to get to her, her eyes too busy taking in Peeta -- healthy and whole and alive and safe. Here, with her.

She heard the crack of the rifle butt on the mayor’s skull as Peeta ordered the rebels to let her go. She barreled down the steps and flew into Peeta’s arms, barely flinching when the rebels lodged a bullet in the mayor’s skull, silencing his furious tirade.

“You’re alive. You’re back,” she sobbed and Peeta bent his head so that his lips just touched her neck, right above the pearls, and warmth spread through her. It felt so impossibly good to be in his arms again.

“I’m sorry I stayed out so late,” he whispered and she laughed as the rebels torched the mansion behind them, the flames crackling high into the midnight sky.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments welcome. Also, I have a question for you all. Even writing this didn't get the bug out of my brain. I spit out another 7-8K words following these two after the war. It's not much, mostly reflection and some smut, but if anyone is interested in reading it, let me know and I might add it on some time after the new year.


End file.
